We are all in the business of creating the future. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, for one, has presided over the explosion of the city's tech community to drive economic growth; he even appointed the city's first chief digital officer.

Yet, as impressive has this growth has been, NYC is still a big place and there are still opportunities to change it for the better. The tech community must propel new initiatives, which include transforming elections, connecting more people to entrepreneurship, growing the sharing and peer economies, and of course, addressing the future of work itself and how we manage the built environment.

We got into all of that Tuesday night at an event called "5 Ideas to Change the City," organized by Control Group's Robert Richardson as part of the South Street Seaport's Tech Tuesday series. Five panelists, myself included, shared ideas for changing New York. Other speakers were Sami Naim, assistant counselor to Mayor Bloomberg; Jonathan Bowles, executive director of the Center for Urban Future; Althea Erikson, director of public policy at Etsy; and Greg Lindsay of the NYU-Rudin Center for Transportation Policy & Management.

Of the five ideas presented, the two below struck me as most intriguing (besides my own brilliant idea around transforming the way we do composting in NYC). They get this distinction primarily because they are the most easily implemented in smaller cities. They also answer the core question of the day: how can the tech community support and push forward the following big ideas focused around transforming elections and fostering the new economy?

The First Big Idea: Elections
Democracy is more than voting. It is a deep commitment and we owe it to ourselves and every other country to keep innovating to get it right. And yes, the tech community is going to be critical in transforming the election process.

The voting process in many places in the United States sucks. Naim spelled it out by reminding us that "in a few weeks we will be going through citywide elections...there are four million registered voters almost all of whom have to appear at one of the 1,300 poll sites spread throughout the city. And they all have to appear between 6 a.m. and 9 p.m. to exercise their right to vote."

"What you have is a logistical nightmare," said Naim. Archaic technology is being used, new and old equipment often breaks down, poll sites do not open on time and have long lines, voting machines malfunction, voter workers are poorly trained, and voter registration forms are not counted for various reasons.

"There is a lack of metrics to track performance," he added, asking "are things getting better or worse? Where are the problems?" Naim related it to the experience of going to Yelp to evaluate a restaurant. He argues how "out of step voting is when it comes to the expectations that the public has on service delivery."

Naim believes we should be able to go to a website or an app to check if there is a line at our local voting site and view data that can suggest the best time to show up. In fact, we should be able to virtually queue and schedule our voting time online, Naim said. This system could translate to anywhere in the countryor world.

He called on the tech community to create a feedback platform where everyone who votes records his or her experience to measure how to plan the day around voting. "Make voting a part of your life as much as everything else you have going on," he advocated.

The Second Big Idea: The New Economy
Bowles polled the audience and found that, unsurprisingly, a significant number of people were entrepreneurs. "We are actually in a golden age of entrepreneurship," he said.

He noted that people from many corners of society are becoming entrepreneurs, from lawyers starting food trucks to immigrants opening up mom-and-pop shops. "What we are not seeing is entrepreneurship among low-income native-born New Yorkers," he pointed out.

While acknowledging the reality of the lack of access to capital, he still thinks we can focus on "unleashing the entrepreneurial spirit" and called for "embracing entrepreneurship as one route for low-income New Yorkers to achieve economic self-sufficiency."

One of his great ideas focused on bringing tech startup competitions that happen almost weekly in Manhattan to poorer neighborhoods, community colleges, and New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) facilities.

His thoughts were in tandem with Althea Erickson of Etsy, who spoke about how we are now "much more atomized" and separate from our big institutions than we were in the past.

The rise of tech-enabled platforms allows us to "connect around our micro-identities," she said. This lets us transact with one another, exemplified by the Peer Economy. "You can go online, you can find a market for your skills and your products, and you can keep much more of the value you create," she said.

The other side of the New Economy is the Sharing Economy. Greg Lindsay referenced this idea when talking about the future of work. His argument is that office buildings are generally not used and "the most energy-intensive thing we do is build buildings." In an effort to make the office space more like the city, we need to think differently about space and perhaps make office buildings radically different.

"The real challenge for the NYC tech community is to come up with a business model that allows people to use all of this unused space. How do we activate the dead space that is around us all the time?"

Then, of course, there is the opportunity for mentorship. Bowles talked about sending experienced tech entrepreneurs into low-income areas to act as mentors. "This is one way the tech community can step in," he said. "Tech entrepreneurs know what it takes to start a business, tech or not, and can be a resource."

Erickson offered up the best advice for integrating tech communities and cities: "The tech community should offer itself as a partner to the City," she said, "as opposed to an advocate for its own interests. Often we sort of present ourselves as 'we are building these companies, this is what we need' and instead we should shift that to 'this is what we can offer, this is how can help." She added, "the way that the city tends to approach problems is the way that the city has always approached problems and the way that the tech community approaches problems is different and so offering ourselves up as a resource can really help."

And to you, what is your big idea to change where you live and love? More importantly, what can the tech community do to move that idea forward?

About the Author

Ibrahim Abdul-Matin is a PCMag.com contributor. For over a decade has been a passionate voice for the planet and its people. He is the author of Green Deen: What Islam Teaches About Protecting the Planet and contributor to All-American: 45 American Men On Being Muslim. Ibrahim is a former sustainability policy advisor to New York Mayor Michael Bloo... See Full Bio

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